Category: Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology

Abolition Feminism

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A few words from Angela Davis, from a recent Democracy Now interview.

…as a consequence of the developments over the last two years, we think it is even more important to insist that abolitionist strategies also be feminist strategies, that we assume as broad a perspective as possible. I mean, we’re not simply talking about myopically examining what is happening in jails and prisons. And, of course, that’s a huge issue, so I probably should not have even used that word, “myopic.” But we’re thinking about the interconnectedness, the interrelationality between the predicament in jails and prisons and detention facilities, the violence of the police, the intimate violence that happens to so many women and gender-nonconforming people all over the world. That is, as a matter of fact, the most pervasive form of violence in the world. And we want to be able to imagine a different world. We want to be able to imagine a world in which that violence has been reduced and eventually eradicated. And we think that abolition feminism is the perspective that allows us to move in that direction.

Relinquishing the Patriarchy

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Identity, Subverting Empire1 Comment

ambLast year, Detroit-based author and activist adrienne maree brown poured out an epic post on patriarchy. The entire post is required reading for men on the radical journey. This is her conclusion, a list of 14 practices.

the good news is, there are practices that work. here are steps i guarantee will help you to relinquish patriarchy.

1. recognize that as a man, you are a part of patriarchy. even if you have made some effort to break out of it, the system/insanity of patriarchy is still there for you to fall back into under pressure or duress.

2. be particularly vigilant about your masculinity growing toxic in your 30-50s age range. those are the years for many of us where the weight of adulting gets real and feels too heavy, and the dreams we had for our lives may not be coming true – hence the pattern of midlife crises. this is when men can become strangers to the women who trust them. yes, change is constant, and we all deserve space to change. none of us deserve a pass to change in ways that make us more harmful to those with less systemic power than we have, especially not those who have carried us. Continue reading “Relinquishing the Patriarchy” →

Pride: 51 Years After Stonewall

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Stonewall InnFrom Richard Cleaver in Know My Name: A Gay Liberation Theology (1995):

I believe that almost any passage of scripture could be used to show that lesbians and gay men have a vital place in the body of Christ. I believe this because of an article of my faith that I hope I can lead you to share. It is this: if Jesus, in his passion and death, freely chose to become a victim of injustice, his sharing of our oppression entitles those of us who are still victims of injustice to demand that any pronouncement of scripture or ecclesiastical authority be judged by whether it helps or hinders our liberation, our becoming subjects of history, not victims only.

 

A Kind of Consciousness

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anzalduaGloria Anzaldúa describing “the new Mestiza” in her book Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987).

She puts history through a sieve, winnows out the lies, looks at the forces that we as a race, as women, have been a part of. . . She reinterprets history and, using new symbols, she shapes new myths. She adopts new perspectives toward the dark-skinned, women and queers. She strengthens her tolerance (and intolerance) for ambiguity. She is willing to share, to make herself vulnerable to foreign ways of seeing and thinking. She surrenders all notions of safety, of the familiar. Deconstruct, construct. She becomes a nahual, able to transform herself into a tree, a coyote, into another person. She learns to transform the small “I” into the total self.

**In an interview in 1991, Anzaldúa elaborated:

Typically, for me, the “new Mestiza” is a kind of border woman who is able to negotiate between different cultures and cross over from one to the other and therefore has a perspective of all those different worlds that someone who is mono-cultural cannot have. And because she has that kind of perspective, tiene conocimiento: she has an understanding of what’s going on in all these different terrains. And so her interpretation is based on perceiving more about the different realities in this world than someone who is just mono-cultural…The new Mestiza for me is a feminist, is definitely a feminist, whether she calls herself that or not. And she’s different from the old mestiza because it’s no longer just a question of blood, it’s no longer a matter of one being Indian or black or Asian or Spanish; you may have those bloods and be raised in a white, middle-class world, or you may be a white woman but be raised in a Chicano community. So it goes beyond just the biological mestiza… there’s such a thing as a cultural mestiza. It’s a kind of consciousness.

Much More Complex

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Race, Theological Animation3 Comments

GafneyFrom Dr. Wil Gafney, the author of Womanist Midrash (2017), in her podcast interview with Peter Enns and Jared Byas:

If you take seriously that women have heard throughout the centuries that what is masculine in some context is more closely identified with God, that what is feminine is other, and we even go back into church fathers like Tertullian for whom women were the devil’s gateway. I mean, there’s a whole lot of theological work that’s heavily invested in God being male and exclusively male. In fact, there’s a text that says men are the image of God and women are the image of man or something. That sets up a whole world of church and theology that marginalizes women. Yet for people who come out of the community that I did–the black church–for whom it really matters, what does the Bible say? It matters that the biblical text says repeatedly that God’s gender identity is complex. Binary language is used because the Hebrew Bible has two options. Masculine and feminine. But God is presented in a much more complex way. And that matters when we’re talking about people and hierarchy, particularly when those earthly hierarchies are entrenched in gender which is then claimed to be based on God and the Bible.

Reading the Bible as a Trans-Affirming Ally

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Uncategorized2 Comments

indexBy Mx Chris Paige

Reading the Bible while transgender involves sorting through many distortions and biased assumptions that have been passed along, both through tradion and translation. Often critics are so confident in their bias that they aren’t even looking at the text. My book, OtherWise Christian: A Guidebook for Transgender Liberation, has only been out for a few months, so I am only beginning to encounter trolls, but I have already seen “conversations” devolve into “because I said so” non-arguments. Looking past the strident (and often ignorant) opposition is the first barrier to reading the Bible as a transgender-affirming ally. Continue reading “Reading the Bible as a Trans-Affirming Ally” →

Transgender Liberation Invitation

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Uncategorized1 Comment

indexThe Alternative Seminary, Transfaith,
and Germantown Mennonite Church
 Invite You to

 Transgender Liberation:
Intersectional Identities, Alternate Genders, and the Biblical Testimony of Eunuchs

 Saturday, November 2
10:00 am – 12:00 noon

 Germantown Mennonite Church
21 W. Washington Lane, Philadelphia

Mx Chris Paige (formerly publisher of The Other Side magazine) will present from their new book, OtherWise Christian: A Guidebook for Transgender Liberation. Drawing on 25 years of transgender-affirming scholarship, Chris will invite us to expand our understanding of the 50 explicit uses of the word “eunuch” in the Christian Bible (many of which are obscured in translation), as well as other likely or perhaps eunuchs such as Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. In doing so, we will challenge one another to live more deeply into resistance from colonized gender ideology, white supremacy, and Christian empire. Continue reading “Transgender Liberation Invitation” →

I Speak from the Deep Throated Voice of a Survivor

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

RubyBiography as Theology from the Front Porch of Mother Ruby Sales (posted to Facebook August 28, 2019).

My story which is both a Black story and an American one. It is a story shaped by more than fifty years of watching and wading in the ebb and flow of White supremacy in America. It is the story of both a survivor and freedom fighter who has experienced the best and worst of America.

Our story

“They are bringing drugs and sending their criminals.”

“Go back to where you come from.”

“Go back to your crime ridden neighborhoods.” Continue reading “I Speak from the Deep Throated Voice of a Survivor” →

Relationship is not the Answer to Racism

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology1 Comment

Chanequa Walker BarnesFrom the blog of Chanequa Walker-Barnes, author of the upcoming release I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation. Walker-Barnes is a theologian and psychologist whose mission is to serve as a catalyst for healing, justice, and reconciliation in the Christian church and beyond.

People often ask me how long it takes me to write a book. That’s a hard question to answer. With both of my books now, I spend years living the book before I sit down to write the book. I spent 10 years immersed in the Christian racial reconciliation movement, from 2006-2016. From the beginning, I was plagued by “Yes, but” moments, but that didn’t stop me from being all in. I loved being in spaces where diverse Christians had honest convo about race and racism. I had only experienced that previously in Black church spaces. Continue reading “Relationship is not the Answer to Racism” →

relinquishing the patriarchy

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Uncategorized1 Comment

3599EC8E-44F3-4B67-8C7A-4B49B90EA906-924x1024By adrienne maree brown, re-posted from her website.

dear men.

this is mostly a note to straight, cis men; but also includes trans men, queer men, and all who participate in masculinity – if you see yourself in these words, this is a love note to you.

patriarchy (the system of society/government in which men hold the power and women are excluded from it) is collapsing, and it’s time for you, too, to give it up, to get yourself out.

it won’t be easy.

i don’t believe total revolution or liberation happens in one generation, but i know from my own life and many lives i have witnessed and accompanied, that it is absolutely possible in your lifetime, in a generation, to personally relinquish an unjust ideology, to begin to practice a more evolved way of being.
Continue reading “relinquishing the patriarchy” →